PhET Interactive Science and Math Simulations, Now in App Form!
PhET, the good folks who have been bringing us free, interactive science and math simulations for years, now have an app, providing STEM education at its best.
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Tag: Biology
Kickstarter Alert: ‘Science Wide Open’ Kids’ Science Books About Women
‘Science Wide Open’ is a set of three children’s books about famous women in science. Divided into Chemistry, Biology, and Physics, each book follows a curious girl as she explores science as she learns about famous women and their contributions.
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Pokébiology: Where Science and Pokémon Meet
Anika interviews a biologist to discover how Pokémon and real-world science intersect.
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Create Your Own Biodome in ‘Tyto Ecology’
‘Tyto Ecology’ is a videogame about creating and maintaining biomes, filling them with plants and animals and keeping them in balance.
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‘Human Body Theater’: Review and Excerpt
Read an excerpt from ‘Human Body Theater,’ a new comic book by Maris Wicks all about the human body!
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Kickstarter Review: MudWatt Getting Dirty With STEM
MudWatt is a microbial fuel cell kit that is intended to teach and spark an interest in energy, biology, physics, chemistry, and engineering across a wide-range of ages.
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Geek-twisting Holiday Songs
Oh, who wants the same old boring lyrics to our holiday favorite tunes? Add a geeky twist!
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Review: If I Ran the Rainforest Ebook
If I Ran the Rainforest sees the Cat taking Sally and her brother Dick on a journey to a rainforest to learn all about them.
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Review: The Big Lie by Tanya Selvaratnam
A call for increased education on topics of women’s fertility and the difficulty of conceiving later in life.
Continue ReadingPolyphemus Moth Metamorphosis in Photos
Like any good parent I’ve read my kids The Very Hungry Caterpillar (in English and Chinese) countless times, and it’s a fun book both for its subtle anti-junk food propaganda as well as the fun depiction of one of nature’s …
Continue ReadingDirt — It Does a Body Good (GeekDad Wayback Machine)
maessive (via Flickr) You may have heard the criticism of the ubiquity of antibacterial products, with scientists saying that it helps antibiotic-resistant bacteria grow and flourish. But there’s new research that indicates that that criticism may not be going far …
Continue ReadingCreating Crazy Creatures Through Genetics (GeekDad Weekly Rewind)
Anyone can use their imagination to make up pretend creatures. Kids do it all the time. They bring home a drawing from school to show you with pride, and you smile and say, “Tell me about your wonderful picture!” while …
Continue ReadingCreating Crazy Creatures Through Genetics
Anyone can use their imagination to make up pretend creatures. Kids do it all the time. They bring home a drawing from school to show you with pride, and you smile and say, “Tell me about your wonderful picture!” while …
Continue ReadingCitizen Science Projects
It’s a dark and blurry but if you look closely you can see that this is a picture of my younger son holding a flashlight while my older son tags a horseshoe crab. The boys were participants two years ago …
Continue ReadingToronto Zoo’s Tundra Trek
As we do every year, this weekend my family celebrated (Canadian) Thanksgiving, along with the shared birthdays of my boys, Jon and Aidan, and their grandfather. It always makes for a busy weekend and every year -except for last- we’ve …
Continue ReadingCanadian Palm Trees Migrating South For The Winter?
London (Ontario) experienced what may turn out to be the last gasp of summer weather last Thursday, so after my wife was home from work, we piled the kids in the truck and headed for nearby Port Stanley for what …
Continue ReadingMythBusters to Headline North Carolina Science Festival
The North Carolina Science Festival kicks off on September 11th. With hundreds of events scattered across the entire state, there’s something for everyone at the first of its kind festival. One event of particular interest to most GeekDad readers is …
Continue ReadingWho Needs “Moo?” – Five Exotic Animal Noises to Share With Your Kids
Bored with moo, baaa, and oink? Here are some slightly more *exotic* noises guaranteed to thrill the playground and/or terrify your child into immediate behavioral correction. Some practice required.
Continue ReadingCellCraft: Can a Creationist Game Teach Biology?
This week GeekTeen John sent me a link about a just-released computer game called CellCraft. He thought I might want to write about it on GeekDad, because it was fun to play and full of information about what makes up …
Continue ReadingPhylo: Real-World Pokemon
Recently a couple of college kids who were over for game night were talking about Pokemon, about how they used to know the names of all the Pokemon (at least the first generation, I think). Well, then they just couldn’t …
Continue ReadingWeird Bug Lady’s Plushies are Entomologically Correct
We’ve been raising triops again. I wanted to bring some of the prehistoric crustaceans, which have adapted to life in temporary pools by laying eggs which can stay dormant for years, to my first library presentation about my book Discover …
Continue ReadingE. O. Wilson’s Scientifiction: Anthill
E. O. Wilson knows a lot about ants. A biologist and naturalist who teaches at Harvard, Wilson has a couple Pulitzers under his belt and has written a lot of books on a variety of topics, including sociobiology and “consilience”—the …
Continue ReadingTeaching Your Kids Where Your Food Comes From
In this day and age of economic collapse and global warming there is a fascination with where our food has come from, how it’s been grown or raised and how it was transported to our local shop. But how many …
Continue Reading80 Million Year Old Dinosaur Proteins Found
Proteins are one of the essential building blocks of life – think of them as the skilled, manual labour in your body carrying out all essential tasks necessary to keep you functioning. These workers are found all across nature and …
Continue ReadingFinally, a Credible Free Online Source for Science Education
There are lots of places to find information online—the problem is how to gauge the reliability of the information you find. I like Wikipedia as much as anyone, but the grain of salt its openness requires can lend the information …
Continue ReadingWubbzy to Promote World Autism Day
We are only beginning to understand autism and autism spectrum disorders. These days, 1 in 150 children are diagnosed with autism, however severity can range from mild to severe. It is more common in boys than in girls: 1 in 94 boys is diagnosed. With this kind of prevalence, chances are very good that you […]
Continue ReadingOur New Computer Microscope-The QX5
As I wrote a few weeks earlier, we’ve been happily using our standard student model microscope to observe biology specimens and take photos and videos. But it’s always bugged me that I never got the QX3, a neat-looking computer microscope for kids I saw when my sons were young. Making my regrets all the more […]
Continue ReadingThe Way We Work is Cool Anatomy for Kids
Children’s book author/illustrator David Macaulay’s specialty is explaining complicated things through clear, lively drawings. He also has a terrific, if dry, sense of humor (probably a result of his English origins). The first Macaulay book I ever bought – long before I had kids – was 1980’s Unbuilding, the story of the purchase and dismantling […]
Continue ReadingIgnorance Was Bliss: Taking a Lego to the Eye
One of the hallmarks of a geekparent is a hunger for knowledge. RSS feeds, news and magazine subscriptions and observations make us pretty well-informed members of the societies we inhabit. But, there are some things that can only be lived. Taking a Lego to the cornea is an experience we hope not to repeat. I […]
Continue ReadingAstrobiology Rap
NASA’s Astrobiology Magazine European Edition has commissioned Oort Kuiper, a.k.a. Johnathon Chase, to make a six-minute rap video about astrobiology. Enjoy! Via Slashdot
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